The "2020 International Forum on Sustainable Mineral Supply Chains and 2020 Week of Sustainable Supply Chains" was held in Beijing from December 2 to 4. Chen Hongliang, President of the Group, attended the conference on behalf of the Company and delivered a keynote speech under the title of "Responsible Supply Chain Management Practices of Huayou Cobalt".
"With the rapid development of the new energy lithium battery industry, the mining and processing of cobalt will be expanded to meet the increasing demands, therefore, the cobalt metal-related sustainable development has caught attentions recently." After a series of introductions of the Company's basic situation, the advantages of industry integration and the supply chain map exampled by lithium electricity industry. President Chen focused on the management practice in the responsible cobalt supply chain of the Company in the speech.
President Chen stated that upon the wide communication and field investigation by experts and interested parties in recent years, Huayou Cobalt has drawn lessons from management experience of the responsible mineral supply chain, and took the lead to establish a due diligence management system of responsible cobalt supply chain in the cobalt industry in February 2017 based on the five-step management framework and relevant due diligence management guides of mineral supply chain proposed by the United Nations (UN), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals & Chemicals Importers & Exporters (CCCMC). After recent years of hard work, the due diligence management system has made a series of achievements and been highly recognized by relevant parities of the society.
Moreover, President Chen also pointed out the problems existing in the responsible supply chain management and shared the inspirations on the management. In the speech, President Chen mentioned that the enterprise should not only pay attention to the risk mitigation of cobalt supply chain, but also conduct joint action to take remedial measures to the affected communities and innovatively create the "six-step" of the due diligence management, since the "six-step" is the only way to seek both temporary and permanent solutions and also is the best way to construct the current due diligence management of the responsible cobalt supply chain.
At the end of the speech, President Chen on behalf of the Company urged everyone to pay much attention to the source industry and the root causes of problems existing in the cobalt supply chain, and called on the industry upstream and downstream to cooperate with each other to actively construct the responsible cobalt supply chain, so as to effectively reduce and eliminate the human right risks of the supply chain and promote the sustainable and healthy development of the industry, thus making contribution to the economic and social development of the Democratic Republic of the Congo!
The Forum is the first high-standard comprehensive international conference of mineral supply chain held in China. Persons in charge and authoritative experts of international organizations, government departments, standards organizations and the enterprises, investment institutions, non-governmental organizations in all links of the mineral supply chain attended the conference and shared the best practices, to pursue sustainable development. The Forum, with the theme of "Rules Change and Management Improvement in the New Era", includes one main forum, one seminar and five sub-forums to discuss the topics of "Responsible Mineral Traceability", "Co-construction of Sustainable Natural Rubber Value Chain" and "Responsible Management and Challenges of Cobalt Value Chain".
